Blog archive January 2025

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30.01.25 / 01 / my bristol

In the last few years the Bristol area bus system has changed completely. The old paradigm was linear. One expected to get one bus all the way from start to destination. Changes were undesirable and usually happened at bus stations. The new paradigm is a network. The Metro buses are pseudo-trams - coloured and numbered 'lines' across the city, high frequency, bigger and fewer tram-style stops, and contactless card payment. One navigates by short hops and line changes at intermediate stops. This is enabled by real-time location data to apps and bus stop displays - in the old paradigm one might be marooned at a bus stop waiting for a connection that never comes.

For close to 60 years I've been travelling the same bus route to and from my parents' house, through Patchway, Filton, Horfield, Bishopston, Stokes Croft into the bus station and Broadmead. With every trip to and fro I've watched the gradual changes, a repaint, a new shop owner, a different use, a new building, new street art. This route has been 'my' Bristol. The bus now diverts east through the new developments of the city fringe, and then into the centre on the M32. It certainly picks up more passengers and it's a much better service to the railway station, but I miss my Bristol.

So I decided to take the old route in to see what's changed. The issue is that there is now no one bus all the way in - it's necessary to change twice. The new urban quarter at what used to be Filton airfield pulls everything sideways to serve it - the old main road offers few passengers by comparison.

Once back on route, I found much that was familiar, but I have the impression there are more cafes and eateries and fewer local shops - as everywhere since the pandemic. The 'Japanese listening cafe' looked intriguing, but its reviews have nosedived recently - it seems to have been overwhelmed due to social media attention. I've seen this happen to a couple of places in London.

On the other hand, Plastic Wax Records, which looked like an anachronism a decade ago, must now be feeling secure, but is no longer independent.

Stokes Croft looked a bit tatty, in need of fresh paint. The famous Mild Mild West Banksy (it has its own Wikipedia entry?!) is fading - how do you restore a Banksy - would he do it?

Avon House is being demolished, having loomed boringly over the underpasses for 53 years. The demolition hoardings make it look more interesting than it ever was before. There was a peculiarly dull strain of Bristol brutalism, heavy and monotonous cladding panels applied like wallpaper across entire buildings and even groups of buildings without any break or modulation. It was as if someone had tried to invent a style for Bristol - I suspect only one or two architects' firms were responsible - but it damaged the place. Half of it has gone already, before I got round to photographing it as a thing (a boring thing).

Also going, unfortunately, is Rupert Street car park. It's the first continuous spiral car park in Britain, but the reason people wanted it listed was really because it looks good. All it needs is the crap clearing away from around it to reveal its form. Bristol's Guggenheim.

And so to a quick walk around the centre. All evidence of slave trader Edward Colston, after whom so many things were once named, has been pretty much removed. Colston Avenue and Colston Street keep their names, for the moment - how long? I had a coffee at Caffe Moka, the best located coffee shop in Bristol and authentic Italian (the coffee is divisive!), before catching the bus home by the modern route.

20.01.25 / 01 / design approaches

Three ways it can go:

You know almost immediately what it should be, have the whole thing in your head in the first ten minutes. You just have to guide everybody to your solution.
You grope around blindly trying to capitalise on happy accidents. Putting together a jigsaw puzzle without a picture to guide you.
You know pretty much what it should be but struggle to land it. You started in the wrong place with fixed assumptions. You can’t get a solution without discarding them. But you don’t know what they are.

I so often do number 3.

15.01.25 / 01 / pumpkin

Just messing with pumpkin colours. I bought a couple of jackets that are in the pumpkin colour space.

02.01.25 / 02 / lights in the darkness

Coda to the preceding: During the winter of the pandemic, the enforced lockdown of Christmas 2020 and early 2021, many people kept their outdoor Christmas lights on until February. We needed the cheer on our quarantined night walks.

02.01.25 / 01 / christmas isn't over yet

I’m always disappointed by people who put up Christmas decorations at the beginning of December (or before) but take them down on 26th or 27th December. Christmas isn’t over yet! Somebody should tell them. It runs to January 5th, followed by Epiphany on the 6th. In my childhood Christmas decorations went up two or three days before Christmas and came down on 5th January. (Naturally it was considered 'unlucky' to leave them up longer.)

The increased celebration of New Year has cut the Christmas season in half. In England New Year was on March 25th from the 12th century to the middle of the 18th, and most European countries had similar dates, so Christmastide was not interrupted by another, secular, festival. And commercialisation - the lights go on for the shopping season, and once the gifts have been given there’s no further point. Nobody knows what else to do with the 12 days, except the Boxing Day sales and the New Year sales to clear all the unsold Christmas stock.

Advent is undermined as a separate (and serious) season by the premature focus on Christmas (for no other reason than to make you shop). Advent calendars don't help, because they end on Christmas Day. It gives the sense that the season is December and Christmas Day is the end of it.

We need to do a Christmas calendar, on the lines of the Advent one, to mark out the 12 days and Epiphany with doors and gifts. It could start Christmas Eve. The Epiphany door should contain three gifts! A physical reminder that it isn’t over yet until Christ has been presented at the Temple and the Magi have visited. You would think that the capitalists would see Epiphany as an opportunity for gift-giving too - obligatory to buy three of everything!